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This morning I’d like to take some time to focus on the familiar Palm Sunday hymn, “All Glory, Laud and Honor.” It’s an old chestnut. Written about the year 820 AD, it’s been a Palm Sunday favorite for centuries. The words come from the pen of Theodulph of Orleans. Theodulph was born in Spain among the remnants of the Visigoths. But he traveled widely in his younger years and ended up as a monk who in time was accepted into the royal court of Charlemagne and appointed Bishop of Orleans in 781. He was an exemplary man. Influenced by the great centers of learning in Rome, he devoted much of his energy and influence to the building of public schools throughout the region. And he was humble and generous-hearted. Theodulph had a peculiar custom; he never closed his door. He believed that the door should remain open so that people traveling on the road or poor folks could wander in for a meal or a bed for the night. I’m not sure I could live up to that example, but it’s a beautiful concept.
However, when Charlemagne died in 814, Theodulph wound up on the bad side of his successor. Louis the Pious suspected Theodulph of conspiring against him, deposed him from his bishopric and threw him in a monastery in Angers. As they say, no good deed ever goes unpunished. But Theodulph’s faith sustained him inside those walls, and he turned to writing poetry. It was there he wrote Gloria, laus et honor, the Latin hymn that has been translated into All Glory, Laud, and Honor. The hymn is a glorious celebration of Jesus’ entry into the Holy City, and it was written in the midst of the most dire and lonely circumstances.
It is as though the good Bishop, in his imprisonment during the last chapter of his life, was looking forward to the joyous inauguration of the “New Jerusalem”, as the author of the book of Revelation saw it, “coming down out of heaven from God, prepared as a bride adorned for her husband”, the Holy City reborn into the fullness of God’s intentions. These days it’s pretty hard to imagine that glorious city of Revelation’s vision. Jerusalem, the city whose name means “peace,” is currently caught in the midst of a brutal war. Many years ago we had a friend, Rabbi Barbara Simons who, when Dadgie and I were in Franklin, Massachusetts, was the Rabbi of Temple Etz Chaim (which met in the sanctuary of our church building). Rabbi Simons went to Jerusalem with a tour group of American Rabbis. On her return, she presented a number of us clergy who were on the Interfaith Council with small stones taken from the ground around Jerusalem. She said that each one of these stones she brought back was “one less stone to be thrown at someone.” Dadgie and I had the masons work our stone into the chimney at the Royalston house. We call it, “One Less Stone.”
Our lives, from cradle to grave, are far too full of stones: stones thrown at others, and those thrown at us. So much in our world seems to be “out of whack.” I love the sign in the hardware store window that says, “If it ain’t broke, just keep fixin’ it ‘till it is.” Sometimes it seems that’s all we manage to do: keep stumbling across the brokenness of the world and in our efforts only managing to make matters worse.
But the vision of St. Theodulph is our vision. It’s the astonishingly improbable vision of the Holy City as the incubator of peace in a world of hate. It’s the vision of our hopes for the children, a vision that seems equally improbable in a world where children bully others until they commit suicide, or take guns to school to shoot their classmates. St. Theoldulph’s vision seems improbable in a world where women are forced by fundamentalist regimes to virtually disappear from society, and the murders of wives by husbands or brothers is quietly condoned. That vision seems improbable when people systematically slaughter others simply for being members of a rival group or for not adhering to their strict beliefs and practices.
But hope is that which sings in the face of the storm. It’s the voice of a brighter vision lifted up while others are slinging mud and throwing stones. Dadgie got an email from a dear friend while she was awaiting surgery some years ago. It said only: “Hope is good! Hang onto it.” I remember as soon as I saw that email, I thought, “That’ll preach.”
This sad world desperately needs some Theodulphs, some people with the temerity to sing a song of celebration for the emerging Holy City of peace, while wasting away in the prison of discouragement. That’s what we need to counter the semi-automatic fire of news reports about hate, and rage, and inhumanity. We need a sprinkling of people here and there who can still laugh with the abandon of boundless faith, a people consumed with meaning and purpose rather than consuming the world’s trinkets, a people who know the value of self-restraint and conservation, a people who recognize integrity when they see it and value substance over superficialities. We need a few intrepid souls in our midst who are willing to believe in goodness in spite of news to the contrary. We need a critical mass of witnesses who will testify to the grandeur of the coming city of peace.
That’s the sort of thing the Psalmist was looking for a few thousand years ago. He was clearly suffering some kind of dreadful experience and in the throes of anguish when he wrote, “Give ear to my words, O Lord; give heed to my sighing. Listen to the sound of my cry, my King and my God, for to you I pray.” But he lived with indomitable hope and moved from distress to these words of confidence: “But let all who take refuge in you rejoice; let them ever sing for joy.” It is the singers for joy who brighten our world and inspire us to live in hope as well.
When Jesus entered Jerusalem, he was not only riding to Gethsemane and Calvary, he was raising the shouts of the people, and proclaiming that if the people didn’t shout, then the stones themselves would. It’s an interesting choice of metaphors. Because the ritual that was being reenacted in his triumphal entry was taken from a very ancient and well-known liturgical procession based on Psalm 118. It is the same psalm that includes the lines, “The stone that the builders rejected has become the chief cornerstone.” In Ancient Hebrew tradition, the verse from this psalm “Save us, we beseech you, O Lord! O Lord, we beseech you, give us success!” was sung by the priests as they circled the altar during the feast of booths. As they did so, the congregation waved their lulab, which consisted of branches from trees, often palm branches. That repeated verse begins, in Hebrew: Hôshia-na’ which means “Save us, please!” It is this phrase that morphed into the word Hosanna. So this is the ritual, pulled right out of the tradition of the Feast of Booths, that was being played out on the streets of Jerusalem. And it is a ritual that comes from verses about one who has been outcast, like St. Theodulph languishing in prison and yet redeemed by his own faith and hope, one rejected, as the Psalmist said, like a worthless stone. But the rejected stone, like those that are picked up in the dust of the Holy Land and thrown at bitter enemies today, can be redeemed, and even end up offering witness set into a fieldstone fireplace halfway across the world.
No matter where you find yourself, no matter what the circumstances, you can shout, “Hosanna!”, a shout that, as Jesus said, will either come from you or from the stones themselves. You can proclaim along with the people of Jerusalem who turned out in hope to see the carpenter of Nazareth on a donkey: “Don’t despair! Don’t give up! Lift up your heads! Look at what’s coming!”
St. Theodulph’s hymn originally had thirty-nine verses. Our red hymnal has that chopped down to three. I had considered having us sing all thirty-nine in the original Latin, but I guess the truncated English version will do. Let’s sing it together.
Today, we continue with a time of reflection and self-examination during this Lenten season. We begin with this rather weird passage from the Gospel of John – actually there’s a lot in the Gospel of John that’s pretty weird. According to this account, there were some Greeks who had come to Jerusalem for the festival of the Passover, and they came to the disciples and asked to see Jesus. When Jesus was told these guys wanted to see him, he seems to have simply ignored the request and launched into a monologue about the hour coming to be glorified, and grain falling to the earth, and talking to God about glorifying his name, and a lot of other stuff. He appears to have totally blown off the request by these guys to see him (sometimes I think John was on something when he was writing these things down). Be that as it may, apparently the implication here is that the act of these Greeks wanting to see Jesus was a reflection of the spread of the gospel to the gentiles, and that was the moment when all was fulfilled, and “the hour” had come – or, at least that’s how some biblical scholars interpret it.1
Anyway, the part of this rather rambling discourse that interests me is this: “unless a grain of wheat falls into the earth and dies, it remains just a single grain; but if it dies, it bears much fruit. Those who love their life lose it, and those who hate their life in this world will keep it for eternal life. Whoever serves me must follow me, and where I am, there will my servant be also.” It’s a little oblique, but I’ve read it over and over, and it finally struck me what he’s getting at. It’s this: faithfulness – “bearing fruit” in this Christian life – means getting caught up in something so much bigger than yourself that you kind of lose yourself in it. And when that happens you discover that you’re walking in the very footsteps of Jesus (“where I am, there will my servant be also”). I think that’s a lot like Jeremiah’s high, sweeping vision of the “new covenant.” He says that “days are surely coming, says the Lord, when I will make a new covenant,” when, in other words, the Divine Law will not be just a book or a bunch of teachings; it will be written on everyone’s heart.
Clearly the New Testament writers thought Jeremiah’s vision was fulfilled in their time. They recount the last supper with Jeremiah’s phrase on Jesus’ lips. He says, “This cup is a new covenant in my blood.” And the Apostle Paul says, “[God] has made us competent to be ministers of a new covenant, not of letter but of spirit.” In fact, what we refer to as the “New Testament” is simply another name for the “New Covenant.” So, is it true? Is Jeremiah’s vision a reality? Are we living in the time of the “new covenant?” Is faithfulness the rule? Is the law written on our hearts?
All we need do is pick up the newspaper to have some serious questions. The law of mercy, “an eye for an eye, and a tooth for a tooth” – let alone “turn the other cheek” – was clearly not written on the hearts of Hamas raiders when they murdered children and babies and raped women in Israel. And it was not written on the hearts of Israeli soldiers and rocket launchers when they wiped out city blocks and killed men, women, and children by the score. All we have to do is read a little history. That law was clearly not written on the hearts of white “Christians” around the turn of the twentieth century in Georgia, the Carolinas, Tennessee, Florida, Texas, Arkansas, and Central Illinois who slaughtered black residents and set fire to their homes in orgastic binges of racial hatred.2 And if we take that peek in the mirror, we suspect the law of God is not entirely written on our hearts either.
And yet . . . and yet . . . I don’t think I’d be here doing what I’m doing if I didn’t think we were living under that “new covenant.” I think the divine law of love that holds the universe together is, in fact, “written on our hearts.” I think it’s imprinted on our DNA. How can I say that? Because over the past seventy years or more I’ve been keeping score. And I have met more and more and more people like all of you, people who don’t care a lot about rules but care deeply about love, people who don’t pay as much attention to appearances as they do to the needs and hurts of others, people who aren’t as interested in getting as they are in giving. And this place is not unique. We’ve got churches full of them, all over this country – in fact, all over the world. The reason a fanatic with a gun makes international headlines is that it’s the extraordinary exception. The reason racial hatred gets attention in the media and the history books is that it represents a stunning divergence from the irrepressible tide of human history, a history that reveals a halting but sure evolution toward a more human humanity.
Faithfulness – the kind of faithfulness that comes from losing oneself in the bigger picture of justice and love, the kind of faithfulness that means the Divine law is written on your heart – is, I’m convinced built-in to who we are. When times and circumstances get chaotic, when lives and institutions turn ugly, those are the anomalies. Jeremiah’s vision is here, dwelling beneath the surface of all our lives. Its full realization is emerging, painfully slowly, but dependably. And each one of us contributes our share to that evolution with every choice we make. C.S. Lewis said, “People often think of Christian morality as a kind of bargain in which God says, ‘If you keep a lot of rules I’ll reward you, and if you don’t I’ll do the other thing.’ I do not think,” he continues, “that is the best way of looking at it. I would much rather say that every time you make a choice you are turning the central part of you, the part of you that chooses, into something a little different from what it was before.”3 That’s a wonderful insight; every time you lose yourself a bit in a choice for the greater reality, you’re reflecting more of the law that is written on your heart.
Does this mean we don’t need laws written in books and constitutions? Of course it doesn’t. We need to have a social contract to set some boundaries on human behavior. But looking over your shoulder and thumbing through the rules of the road to see what you can get away with is no way to live a life. And it’s no way to run a church. That’s why we don’t post any list of rules or dogmas around here, or say who’s in and who’s out. Trying to live by the rule book can suck the life right out of a church. That’s the testimony of Michael Lindvall in his wonderful little book, The Good news from North Haven (a place which I suspect is a little like Lake Wobegone). He tells the story of “Second Presbyterian Church. There is no First Presbyterian in town,” he writes, “and there hasn’t been for years. More than a century ago, the newly founded First – and then only – Presbyterian Church enjoyed a fine church fight. Folks still tell the story of the Sunday in June when half the congregation walked out during the sermon and founded Second Presbyterian.
“All memories agree as to what the fight was about: whether young women ought to lead discussions at Christian Endeavor meetings or keep a low profile and ask questions when they got home, as St. Paul seems to have counseled. What memories do not agree on is who was on what side. Some people now say that the Second Presbyterian group that left was in favor of women speaking at meetings, some say they were against it. Whatever the truth, everyone agrees that Second Presbyterian church was squarely established on the firm foundation of an important principle, even if no one is now quite sure what that principle was.”4
Lindvall makes a humorous but worthy point. What matters most in a church? Not correct interpretation of the admonitions of the Apostle Paul, not adherence to officially sanctioned doctrine. What matters is that we all come here and find a place where we can lose ourselves in something far greater than ourselves. What matters is that we recognize that our presence here, our faithfulness in attending, is not a matter of fulfilling a duty, it’s a whole-hearted devotion to this wonderful living organism that we call a church family, and a recognition that it is a little crippled by each absent one of us. What matters is that here we eagerly learn, as if in a kind of laboratory, about the power of love and the presence of the Spirit of holiness.
So what is true faithfulness? I don’t think it’s toeing the line, or watching one’s p’s and q’s. With all due respect to our Trustees and financial officers, I don’t think it’s making the right size of monetary contribution. With great appreciation to all those who give of their time and talents to the church, I don’t think it’s putting in time on church Boards, or programs, or even singing in worship. I think true faithfulness is an ultimate kind of freedom. I think it is becoming so caught up in the greater good and the larger truth of divine love that we kind of lose ourselves and therefore find ourselves – find a deeper more meaningful life. I think it is, in the words of Richard Foster, “nothing more than falling head over heels in love with the everlasting lover of our souls.”5
1 cf: Wilbert F. Howard, The Interpreter’s Bible, Vol. 8, pp 660 ff.
2 Isabel Wilkerson, The Warmth of Other Suns, Random House, 2010. p. 40.
3 C. S. Lewis, Mere Christianity: Comprising the Case for Christianity, Christian Behaviour, and Beyond Personality, Touchstone Books, 1996.
4 Michael L. Lindvall, The Good News from North Haven, Simon & Schuster, 1991.
5 Robert J. Foster, Prayer: Finding the Heart’s True Home, Harper, 1992.
Let me say from the outset that this sermon, like every sermon I preach, is for me as much as for anyone else.
You may recognize the title of today’s sermon as the title of the wonderful Marvin Gaye song from the 1970’s. “Mercy, Mercy Me” served as a soulful call for compassion, empathy, and sustainable change. Gaye called for collective action to protect our planet and foster social justice. Well, we’re engaging in a time of reflection and self-examination in these weeks leading up to Easter, so maybe thinking back to Marvin Gaye and his ballad might be a good note for this morning as we ponder the concept: “mercy.”
I would like to begin with some thoughts about a video that Dadgie and I own and have watched many times. It’s the 25th anniversary production of the musical, Les Miserable. After watching the performance on PBS over a decade ago, we just had to get the DVD. Let me begin by saying if you can listen to Alfie Boe, as the hero Jean Valjean, sing Bring Him Home and not be reduced to a blubbering, sniveling, pile of emotional detritus, you should call your doctor immediately because there’s definitely something wrong. But I think the reason Les Miz has so endured, and became one of the longest running musicals in history (along with virtually countless adaptations on stage, screen, television and radio) is the poignancy of the story. Victor Hugo’s novel is a remarkable tale centered around the June rebellion of 1832 in Paris – an event that Hugo himself was caught in the middle of. The profoundly ironic power of the story lies in the impassioned struggle between a righteous thief and an evil man of God. That’s my kind of yarn. Jean Valjean is arrested for stealing a loaf of bread and spends nineteen years in prison only to have his heart melted upon release by the forgiving act of the Bishop of Digne; he devotes himself to doing good. His jailer, Javert, sees himself as a righteous arm of God’s own judgment, and pursues Jean Valjean for years to send him back to prison where he belongs. In a barricade on a Paris street during the student uprising the tables are turned, and our hero Valjean has the opportunity to take Javert’s life, but he grants him mercy and allows him to escape. One of the most telling moments in the story comes when, after the fighting, Javert has recaptured Valjean, realizes he must let him escape in return for the mercy he was shown at the barricade, but then cannot live with his strict moral code being cracked and throws himself in the river Seine.
Javert devoted his life to what he believed was the righteous will of God. But devoid of mercy, such righteousness becomes an inherent evil. It was a lesson Valjean learned at the outset when the Bishop showed him such extravagant mercy that it shook him to his core. In the case of Valjean the shear power of that mercy was enough to melt his heart and change his life for the good. In the case of Javert, such mercy was too overwhelming; it revealed the deep fault in all that he had lived for, cracked open his soul, and caused him to take his own life.
Mercy is not a game for children; it’s a life-shaking, world-changing force. My own life was changed by a loving congregation when, as a young man, I joined the church and was invited to teach Sunday school and be on the board of deacons. I messed up miserably at the Sunday school thing and had to resign, and I never attended a single deacons’ meeting. No one complained. All I got in exchange for my failure and neglect was support and affirmation. Look what it did to me. Fifty years later, I stand here as a witness to the saving power of mercy – mercy that kept me close to the church, and allowed me to hear the calling to ministry.
In the Merchant of Venice, Shakespeare put on the lips of Portia (pretending to be Balthazar, the lawyer) these immortal words:
The quality of mercy is not strain’d,
It droppeth as the gentle rain from heaven
Upon the place beneath. It is twice blest:
It blesseth him that gives and him that takes.
But Portia’s speech fell on deaf ears, and Shylock refused to relent, demanding his “pound of flesh.” Just like Javert, that refusal to yield, that inability to recognize the inestimable power of mercy, was Shylock’s undoing.
So, you might ask, why this message today? Aren’t I “preaching to the choir,” so to speak? Aren’t all of us here among the merciful of this world? Well, yes, to a large degree that’s true. I’ve seen so much love and understanding among the people of this congregation, at times it’s overwhelming. On the other hand, this is the season for that “long look in the mirror.” And so I ask you – and I ask myself – if we probe our own hearts with unflinching honesty, with brutal objectivity, can’t we find some remnants of Javert? Aren’t we often guilty of underestimating the power of forgiveness, or treating mercy as if it were an inconsequential toy – a calculated choice? What about those times when we feel challenged or attacked by someone we love? It is so human to lash back in anger, to feel justified in our righteous indignation, to need to prove a point or set the other person straight. I know I can fall into needing to have the last word, or at least not backing down if I’m afraid of losing an argument. I’ve been accused at times of being like “a dog with a bone.” What about the person you serve with on a committee or work with on a project – the one who always seems to counter your ideas, and who sets your teeth grinding? Is it possible that any of us, sometimes without even knowing it, seeks out ways to even the score and put the other person in their place? And what of that major rift in the family – that chasm between siblings or between parent and child that seems so non-negotiable? When we’re caught in such divisions don’t we often feel that we are the victims and the other party is the guilty one, so reconciliation can only happen on our terms?
Now, I admit, these kinds of human interactions are not necessarily the equivalent of pursuing a man for years to unjustly throw him in prison or demanding a pound of flesh, but they reveal, I believe, the truth that the potential for such warped righteousness resides in all of us to a degree, and that we live too much of our lives with little respect for the earth-shaking power of mercy.
“Unfortunately, they found a loaded pistol in a dresser drawer and before long their make-believe game turned into a tragic nightmare and little Marie was dead. Everyone in town attended the funeral of the little girl – everyone except John, who could not face anyone and refused to talk to anyone.
“The morning after the funeral, Marie’s older brother went next door to talk to John. ‘John, come with me,’ he said. ‘I want to take you to school.’ John refused, saying, ‘I never want to
see anyone again. I wish it was me who was dead.’ The brother insisted and finally persuaded John to go with him. The brother talked with the school principal and asked him to call a special
assembly. Five hundred and eight students filed into the gymnasium. Marie’s brother stood before them and said, ‘A terrible thing has happened; my little sister was accidentally shot by one of your fellow classmates. This is one of those tragedies that mars life. Now I want you all to know that my family and John’s family have been to church together this morning and we shared in Holy Communion.’ Then he called John next to him, put his arm around his shoulders and continued, ‘This boy’s future depends much on us. My family has forgiven John because we love him. Marie would want that. And I ask you to love and forgive him, too.’ Then he hugged John and they wept together.
“To be sure,” Jones reminds us, “this is as much the beginning as it is the end of the story. Marie’s family will need to continue to struggle to embody this love and forgiveness each and every day of their lives. And John will undoubtedly continue to struggle to accept this love and forgiveness each and every day of his life. Yet Marie’s brother sought John out when he most needed it and risked his own feelings of grief to offer a judgment of grace to John. Beyond that, he also offered a public witness to others, calling the whole community to practice forgiveness.”1
You and I may not be called upon to show mercy on such a dramatic scale, but if we take a long look in the mirror I submit that I, as well as you, may come face to face with some heart-rending truths. We might see that we are the beneficiaries of the limitless grace of the Almighty and therefore compelled to offer that grace to others. We might truly know that the quality of mercy is, indeed, not strained, that its power to alter the lives of both the one who gives and the one who receives is unmitigated. And we might discern (as Jean Valjean and Javert discovered in that timeless drama) that what John calls the “judgment” of the light is that in every moment, with every decision, in every relationship, the power of unstrained mercy can cripple and shatter you, or melt your heart and transform you. If we find ourselves reacting with anger, defensiveness, or perhaps acting like “a dog with a bone” first we need to forgive ourselves, then we will be more free to be gentle with others and offer them mercy. In the final analysis, that power to transform any of us is the greater power – with apologies to Les Miz composer Claude-Michel Schönberg – greater than “the songs of angry men” or “the beating of the drums.” It is “the music of the people” who have learned the lessons of mercy, lessons that give them the gift of hope, and tell them, as the song goes, “there is a life about to start, when tomorrow comes.”2
1 L. Gregory Jones, quoted in Dorothy C. Bass’ Practicing our Faith, Jossey-Bass, Inc., 1997.
2 Claude-Michel Schönberg, Do You Hear the People Sing?, from the musical Les Miserable.
I’ve often thought of doing a sermon about the movie “The Poseidon Adventure,” and when I saw that among this morning’s lectionary readings was the passage you heard from First Corinthians, I knew I had my chance. I don’t know if you’ve ever considered it, but that movie is a remarkable allegory of the gospel. And believe me, it’s no accident (if you’ll pardon the pun). The Christ figure in the movie is a preacher (Reverend Scott, by the way) who finds himself on a ship (the ship being an ancient symbol of the church). This ship is named the Poseidon, who was, of course, the Greek god of the sea who when angered would strike the ground with his trident and cause the earth to shake and ships to wreck. So, the Poseidon, sailing along at Christmas time – the time of Christ’s coming into the world – is hit by a huge ocean wave that turns it completely upside down and it begins to sink. Reverend Scott and a large crowd of folks in the ship’s ballroom find themselves topsy-turvy with the ceiling being their floor and the floor being their ceiling. Rev. Scott tries to convince people that the only way out is by going down into the lower decks of the ship, which are now the ones closest to the surface. His message, of course, runs counter to their instincts, and most of the people reject his idea. But a small band of misfits agrees to follow the preacher, and they lean a huge metal-framed Christmas tree – of course – up against the wall to climb on it up to the doors, which are now up by the ceiling. As they move up, deeper into the bowels of the ship, they encounter others who are headed toward the upper decks (now submerged more deeply in the ocean). Reverend Scott pleads with them and says, “You’re going the wrong way!” But they don’t listen, and continue down, finding themselves trapped as the waters that are flooding the ship rise from below. In the final, climactic scene the good reverend and his disciples are in the engine room, almost at the end of their journey, but the way to the last hatch is blocked by steam from a broken pipe. The only way ahead is to close a valve by turning a huge handle which is up high, over an open expanse with nothing below but the rising flood waters. Reverend Scott jumps up to grab the valve handle and hangs there, slowly turning it. And as the messenger of hope hangs by his arms, he saves the others, but loses his grip and sacrifices himself (sound at all familiar?). The larger message, of course, is the same as offered by the apostle Paul in First Corinthians: Christ came into the world with a message. And that message is that everything is turned upside down. The deepest truth about the world we live in is that our natural instincts betray us, and when we follow the lead of the world and its values we’re going the wrong way. Paul says, “the message about the cross is foolishness to those who are perishing, but to us who are being saved it is the power of God. . . . Has not God made foolish the wisdom of the world? . . . God chose what is foolish in the world to shame the wise; God chose what is weak in the world to shame the strong; God chose what is low and despised in the world, things that are not, to reduce to nothing things that are.” In other words, the world is turned upside down. What everyone thinks is wisdom is actually foolishness, what others see as weakness is real strength, what is regarded as lowly is truly great. This is the very essence of the gospel. And if you don’t mind, this Reverend Scott would like to lead you through it (just don’t confuse me with Jesus – I have no intention of hanging myself out to dry, even though I might find myself in over my head).
First of all, the message of the cross is about wisdom. Wisdom was a valued commodity in the rabbinic tradition. The rabbis took great pride in their knowledge of the intricacies of the law. They, in their wisdom, understood that the Sabbath was set aside by Divine command for a day of rest. They understood the sacred tradition behind Sabbath observance. In their wisdom they knew that only God could forgive people their sins, and then only through the intercessory ritual observances of the temple priesthood. In their wisdom, they were smart enough not to associate with those whose flagrant sinfulness seemed to laugh in the face of good moral conduct: prostitutes, tax collectors, low-lifes of the street.
But Jesus didn’t get a passing grade by the Pharisees in the subject of wisdom. He disregarded the Sabbath, healing people on the Lord’s day, and allowing his disciples to work in the field. He forgave people their sins, right on the spot. He wasn’t bright enough to know that the true business of a religious leader is condemnation not forgiveness. Jesus wasn’t even smart enough to keep the right company. Any good politician knows how to figure out on what side their bread is buttered. But Jesus kept the company of tax collectors and sinners, and agitated and opposed the powerful people in society. He didn’t seem to know when, as the saying goes, “discretion is the better part of valor.” And, as we heard in the gospel reading this morning, acted like a lunatic driving the money-changers out of the temple with a whip. By the standards of his world, Jesus was not too bright. But Paul says, “God chose what is foolish in the world to shame the wise.”
But we, like the Pharisees, tend to adopt the world’s standards of wisdom. Wisdom is to know the list of dos and don’ts, rights and wrongs, mostly so we can easily separate people into categories. Wisdom is to be careful not to step on the wrong toes or rock the wrong boat. Wisdom is to make sure all the wrong sorts of people get shunned or condemned. If such is the standard for wisdom in our world, then I fear a lot of folks are headed the wrong direction, and the water’s rising against them.
A second clear failure of Jesus, by the world’s standards, was a failure of power. In his time, a time of international power plays, with national pride and dominance the theme of the day, power was not a place to fail. Times haven’t changed much.
But Jesus refused the call of the zealots to take up arms. He wasn’t motivated by any drive to win, or to get all he could, or even what he might legitimately have felt he deserved. In short, he was not the leader that everyone wanted, wielding the kind of power that they understood. He lost his following. He never got to build a glass cathedral, or have museum named after him. He became an outcast, hiding with a small group of loyalists on the outskirts of town. He was arrested and tried as a common criminal, and finally executed along with two thieves. By the standards of both his world and ours, Jesus was powerless. But the Apostle Paul says, “God chose what is weak in the world to shame the strong.” The teachings of that executed criminal from Nazareth are life-giving and eternally true. And in that truth lies greater power than all the armies of all the ages. And the message of the empty tomb is that that Divine Power turns even death upside down confounding our pessimism, and turning all of our nights of despair into resurrection mornings.
We tend to adopt the world’s standard of power. We know how to look out for number one, to be the toughest and have the most bombs, to fight for what’s rightfully ours because we deserve it, to win an argument because we don’t want to look weak, or to go along with the prevailing popular opinion because there’s strength in numbers. If such are the standards for determining where real power lies in our world, then I fear a lot of folks are likely to drown in their own hubris.
Then thirdly, Jesus was a loser in the world’s eyes because of a failure to meet the standards of nobility. People knew all about the nobility of the Messiah who was to come. He would be born in the line of David, and inherit the throne of Israel. He would be a king’s king, with the purple hues of royalty coursing through his very veins. And people knew about the nobility of class. They understood the prominence of the intellectual elite: the scribes and the Pharisees, the ones who should receive the honored seats and the place of status, because that’s just the way society works. And they knew the nobility of being the right race. They understood that Samaritans were to be shunned (or perhaps tolerated so long as they were kept in their place).
But Jesus blew it. He didn’t often rub elbows with the elite folks in town, in fact, he tended to hang around with all the wrong people. He spent most of his time with the lower classes – he only owned one piece of clothing himself. And as a Messiah, he was a real loser. He was supposed to have been born a king! But instead he was the seemingly illegitimate child of a girl from Nazareth, born in a barn! By the standards of his world, Jesus had no class!
But Paul says, “God chose what was low and despised in the world, even things that are not, to bring to nothing things that are.” Jesus taught that anyone who would receive him and his teachings is heir to a kingdom, and a child of the Most High! And he made it clear that our ideas about winning and losing and who’s on top are all upside down. He said, “the last shall be first, and the first shall be last.”
We tend to adopt the world’s standards of nobility. Some folks, as we all know, are born to be winners, and some are born losers. That’s just the way it is. If you don’t carry the right credentials, don’t expect to get in the front door. And everyone knows which door to use, because the rules are made clear from the time we’re born. If such are the standards of nobility in our world, then I fear a lot of folks are headed up the down staircase.
So if you’re doing great and coming out on top by the world’s yardstick, look out. And if you’re struggling against the tide of popular culture, take heart! Jesus turned our world absolutely upside-down! He showed us that what we think of as constituting wisdom, strength and nobility are in fact foolishness, weakness, and foppery. Paul puts it this way: the “weakness” of the cross is the very “power of God!” That power is the power of reconciliation, the power of finding our joy in the reclaimed lives of others, of finding a common bond in our common human needs and failings. In that lies wisdom, strength and nobility such as the world has not known.
Well, the little band of followers of Rev. Scott on the Poseidon finally made it. They were saved. What does it mean to be “saved?” I suppose that’s another sermon. But whatever it’s about, there’s one thing we can bank on: Faithfulness to this upside down gospel leads somewhere. In one way or another, it pays off. “There’s got to be,” as Maureen McGovern sang, “a morning after.”
Last week, I mentioned that this Lenten season is a time of self-examination and reflection. It’s a time for looking at some of the deeper and weightier issues of our lives and our faith.
It is with tender care that I raise this morning’s question: why is there suffering? I ask the question gently because I know that there is no one here whose life has been exempt from pain. I know that to raise this question is to tread on sacred ground that is very close to the heart.
There are many in our church family who have faced painful issues of home, family, jobs, and physical health. And the love of the congregation embraces all those who have lost loved ones and dear friends.
Tragedies of immense human proportions, as well as the smaller ones that capsize individual lives, seem to land in our world like random drops of rain. And the thing that never seems to quite add up is this, stated in the classic way: if God is all-powerful and all-loving, why does God allow such things to happen?
Well, if it’s any consolation, theologians have been asking that question in just that way for centuries, and have yet to find any consensus about an answer. When I told Dadgie that this would be my sermon topic for this morning, I suggested that the whole sermon should be just three words: “I don’t know.” But that’s not terribly helpful. So, if I may be so bold, I’d like to offer this morning if not an answer to the question, at least a thoughtful response. I don’t expect that it’s going to set the world of systematic theology on its ear, but then, I’m not all that interested in the world of systematic theology, anyway. This comes from my heart, not just my head.
I think we suffer in order to survive! I’m not sure how to explain that except with a story. Dadgie and I have some friends whose little girl was lost in a house fire many years ago. Hardly any experience of life could be more devastating. That little girl’s mother watched all the joy evaporate from her life as her house and her child went up in flames. In the months and years following that horrible night, she and the rest of the family had to cope with tidal waves of emotion and chasms of depression that threatened the very fabric of their lives. But they surrounded themselves with one another, and wrapped themselves in love. They were embraced by a church family that never gave up on them. In time, that broken family found healing, and their church was bound together by ministering to them.
Am I suggesting that the Almighty set that house on fire and took that child’s life for some “purpose” of healing the family and the church? Never! I could not stand here in front of you and bring a word of hope and faith if I believed that.
Nonetheless, healing and love and community did rise up out of the ashes of that fire. Nothing can justify or explain such a loss, but for that church, as well as that family, a kind of indomitable bond did come into being that would not have been without the despair of that loss. And I am convinced that such health and love and community are absolute necessities for the survival of humanity – necessities because, without the shared struggles characteristic of a community of love, we seem to consistently degenerate into self-serving and ultimately self-destructive creatures.
Witness, in stark contrast to that family’s victory of love over adversity, the sad final years of one of the wealthiest men in history, Howard Hughes, a man whose humanness gradually slipped through his own fingers. From the age of fifty he was thin and bedraggled. In his last years he weighed only ninety pounds. He was dehydrated and starved to the point of being little more than a skeleton. He had hired fifteen personal attendants, but he died malnourished in a state of gross physical neglect. It all happened largely because of his obsession with closing himself off for protection from the miseries that could befall him out in the real world. Without the touch of another hand, unable to accept the risks and challenges of love, secluded within the comfortable vault of self-protective isolation, the human spirit atrophies and dies. We need one another.
But even those of us who are not mega-millionaires find our own ways to avoid the life-sustaining ties of human interdependence. We can use television, work, alcohol, and even superficial social occasions and groups to avoid contact with one another’s desperation and joy. We need some kind of off-setting force, some gravitational attraction, that compels us to yield ourselves to one another.
It is by our suffering that we are driven into each other’s arms. It is by encountering pain, arm in arm, hand in hand, that we experience triumph. And it may well be that suffering and triumph are the very warp and woof of the fabric of life! Without them the strands just don’t hold together.
But, with apologies to Martin Luther King, Jr., to say that “suffering is redemptive” is only part of the story. Because there are also plenty of folks whose trauma and pain only lead to bitterness and defeat. Like the old man I once knew who lived most of his life in an armchair, not because he couldn’t walk, but because there was no place special he wanted to go. As a young man, he had been a boxer, a brash and spirited guy who liked to try anything new. He thought he had the world on a string. But a car accident left him with a permanent limp. He couldn’t face the world as the “half-a-man” he now thought himself to be, so he retired to his easy-chair and existed on a steady diet of bitterness for fifty years.
Suffering will drive us into each other’s arms, and thereby lead us to triumph, if we allow it to. But suffering refused, suffering denied, takes a strangle-hold on a person’s life and strips it of its potential. Those unfortunate souls who expect and demand of life that it be happy, fair, and relatively painless are unknowingly making preparations for the denial of suffering and the wasting of life.
Maybe that’s why Jesus saved his most angry, scathing rebuke for Peter, who tried to tell him he shouldn’t have to suffer. Jesus had just finished explaining that he was going to be rejected, beaten, and killed in Jerusalem (not hard to grasp really; the handwriting was already on the wall. You don’t take on the religious/political power structures of society, call them all a bunch of hypocrites, show them up at their own game, march into the middle of their capital, and then expect to avoid the consequences). But Peter would have none of it. No suffering talk for him. And I sympathize with Peter. He didn’t want to think of this man he loved, this friend, this companion, suffering. Who would? Besides, wasn’t this Jesus-of-Nazareth movement that he was now a part of supposed to be the best game in town? Peter’s like us. He just wants to be on the winning team, on the up-side. And there’s certainly nothing unnatural about that. It doesn’t seem to be a malicious or evil motivation.
But Jesus didn’t mince words. He verbally spat at Peter, called him a devil, and told him he was on the wrong side! Peter would not, in Jesus’ presence be allowed to deny suffering. In fact, Jesus went on to explain, those who wanted to follow him couldn’t deny suffering either. They were to take up their crosses if they wanted to come along.
That message is no more popular today than it was then. These days, we have a whole culture built on the denial of suffering. With the right education, the right job, the right home in the right neighborhood, the right cars, the right toothpaste, every American is supposed to be living out some sort of “dream.” In truth, we are becoming more and more isolated, rootless, disconnected.
And where in this world does the sense of community seem to be strongest, the Christian Church growing like wild-fire, and faith and joy flourishing? In poor third world countries – places where people are connected to each other through shared suffering.
So what’s my point – let’s all be miserable? Just the opposite! In fact, it’s our acceptance of suffering, and the sharing of suffering, that ultimately allows us to set aside misery instead of carrying it around like a fashion accessory.
If suffering is half the fabric of life, the rest is joy, triumph! Accepting suffering in life means accepting joy as well! To receive and move through suffering is to know triumph! To risk tears with friends is also to drink together from the cup of laughter. There are few more powerful feelings in life than the experience of shared joy that goes hand in hand with shared suffering.
Does the Lord of Life make the specific things happen that cause us pain? No, I don’t think so. But, is it necessary that life and existence be put together in such a way that suffering is part of the mix? I believe it is absolutely essential! It throws us where we need to be to survive – into each other’s arms.
At an outdoor mass in San Salvador on the anniversary of the assassination of Archbishop Romero, the crowds gathered in the streets despite the government’s warnings that there might be trouble. And trouble there was. The army moved in to disperse the crowd, firing shots in the air. In the panic that ensued, the situation got out of control. The soldiers began firing into the crowd. A woman ran for her life, along with other members of her church. She carried her infant child in her arms, and held her close to her chest as she ran through the street. But she didn’t make it. As she felt the bullet sting through her back, she threw her baby into the air, and into the hands of those trusted friends who were running with her, members of her church community.
Why is there suffering? Perhaps it’s not a complete answer, but I submit the following: driven by our suffering into each other’s arms, we pass from one person to another that which is of greatest importance – our love.
A while back a bear invaded our deck and took down our bird-feeder. So, since then we only have the bird-feeder up in the winter while the bears are hibernating. Our house in the woods seems to be a magnet for creatures large and small. Lately we’ve been battling stink bugs. I have no idea how they get in the house, but they find a way. We’ve had porcupines, and deer, and rabbits, and squirrels all over our property. In the house at different times, we get flies, and ladybugs, and wasps. So, I find myself raising a word of protest when I read in Genesis that God made a covenant of blessing with, as the good book says, “every living creature of all flesh that is on the earth.” In that, I presume, are included stink bugs and bears. Go figure. What would have possessed Noah to take two stink bugs on the ark anyway?
But seriously folks, there’s a pretty important question being raised by this story. Put one way, the question might be, “does the Almighty really have a covenant with stink bugs?” Put another way: you and I and the forests and the ice caps and the stink bugs are all part of one interconnected, interdependent reality. What’s good for the earth is good for humanity, and that which is destructive of our habitat is destructive of us. In short, yes, the Almighty has a covenant with the stink bugs, as surely as with us.
But I digress. What really interests me about these two stories we heard this morning (the story of the Divine covenant with Noah and every living creature for all generations after the flood, and the story of Jesus’ baptism and wilderness trial) is that they are intimately bound together in ways that point to a profound and life-altering truth. They are bound together in imagery and they are bound together in meaning. The imagery alone is mind-blowing. Both stories involve, curiously enough, water and beasts, and both relate to a forty day period of trial, to a wondrous blessing and sign, and to a transformational new beginning. In the ancient Hebrew legend, the water of rainfall covers the earth for forty days and nights to destroy every creature except those beasts who accompany Noah on the ark. In the gospel story, Jesus is submerged in the waters of the Jordan by John (a wild kind of man who wears camel hair clothing and eats the food of animals), and then is driven by the Spirit into the wilderness with the wild beasts for forty days.
Here’s what I find intriguing: that these two symbols, water and beasts, are ancient and archetypal images for, believe it or not, mom and dad. In ancient mythology, as Joseph Campbell1 points out, beasts have historically represented the father image, and water is the classic symbol for the feminine and the great mother of all life – the universal womb. So there is an essential duality established right off the bat in these stories. The beasts and water represent the duality of male and female. Out of that duality other dualities are born. Chief among them is the duality of trial and promise. The trial in both cases lasts the sacred period of time, forty days. The rains fell for forty days, and Jesus was in the wilderness for forty days. And at the end of those times there was a new world to explore, a new task to undertake. But there is the hint of something more. There is a note of oneness to which we are drawn. In The Power of Myth, Campbell talks with Bill Moyers about the kind of dualities I’ve been describing, “male and female . . . the human and [Divine] . . .good and evil.” He then makes the curious statement that “There is the plane of consciousness where you can identify yourself with that which transcends pairs of opposites.” Moyers asks him what that which transcends the pairs of opposites is, and he replies, “Unnameable. Unnameable. It is transcendent of all names.”2 Here’s the gift wrapped up in these stories about the flood and the baptism: that which is unnameable, that which transcends all knowing, that which we often refer to as “God” draws us toward a deep awareness of, and identification with, that transcendent oneness. In both stories there is a wondrous blessing revealed in a brilliant and hopeful sign. For Noah, the blessing is the covenant that the earth will be preserved from such destruction in the future, and the sign of that blessing is the rainbow fixed in the sky. For Jesus, the blessing is the voice of the Lord declaring that he is the beloved son, and the sign of the blessing is the Spirit descending like a dove from heaven. These stories seem to have been crafted in such a way as to suggest deep and timeless truths that connect them.
Am I reading too much into all this? Possibly. But I’m convinced of the timeless truths nonetheless. Here’s what I think lies at the heart of all this: These are moments of great new beginnings – the beginning of life for all creatures after the cleansing flood, and the beginning of a world-changing ministry. And somehow, at the moment of such great beginnings, something spectacular happens. Forty days of trial are transformed into a new promise, a new life. The dualities of our existence are melded into a unified whole – the reality of that which transcends common experience, the reality of Divinity strikingly and wondrously present in the here and now and made manifest in the appearance of a dove descending from the sky, or a rainbow on the horizon, or perhaps a wildflower at the edge of a meadow.
Every time I see a rainbow, I think of Hawaii. Dadgie and I were blessed to have been given the gift of a trip to that magic paradise a number of years ago. It was two weeks jammed full of delicious moments and experiences of grace. We learned some of the amazing history of those islands, and of the people. We learned of their wonderful resilience and indomitable joy. We saw remarkable, breath-taking landscapes and were in awe of the splendor of creation. We met Hawaiians who struggled with financial burdens, class distinctions, and cultural losses, and yet who work for a better life for their children, find creative ways to build bridges of relationship, and preserve their cultural heritage with enthusiasm and energy. And every evening, without fail, there was a brief rain shower, followed by a lovely rainbow. Those rainbows seem to simply be part of the architecture of Hawaii. But rainbows now are like reminders to me of grace. They remind me that the world is put together in such a way that treasures are found under every leaf of autumn, on every snow-covered field of winter, and behind every soft cloud of springtime. They remind me that human beings are gifted with boundless resources of hope and good will, and that love has the power to heal every heart and transform every life.
You and I are at the beginning of our own forty day period – the forty days of Lent leading up to Easter Sunday. I would like to suggest to you that the stories of the flood and of the baptism of Jesus are not exceptional. They are typical; they are emblematic of the “forty day trials” of our lives, and of the overwhelming wonder that can seize us when we are made aware of our blessing. The season of Lent is typically a time of introspection and self-denial. It’s a time to wander around a bit in the wilderness of our own uncertainties and insecurities, to examine our failed relationships and to look our temptations and addictions squarely in the face. What is your trial in these days leading up to Easter? Whatever it is, it can be the inspiration for a new beginning. In truth, our lives are populated with beginnings, or at least with the promise of beginnings. In a way, every night’s sleep can be a metaphorical forty day trial, and every morning can be a beginning. What if every moment of your life were seen as holding the promise of transformation? What if every moment were a kind of Easter morning with the crocuses poking their heads up through the earth, and signs of your blessing abounding.
I think you all know by now that Dadgie and I live with a beast. His name is Charlie. Sometimes he drives me nuts. He can get barking at anything, and at absolutely nothing at all. He can be demanding of his dinner and his treats. But there are moments, I have to confess, when I look into his eyes and almost imagine that he’s pulling one over on us – that he is actually smarter than we are, and knows more about life and its depths and meanings than we can comprehend. I realize this is ridiculous, but at least he and his kind are living in harmony with nature, and not polluting the air and destroying the planet. Then I look over at the end table and see a dreaded stink bug making his way toward my water glass. And it hits me. We are, in fact – with apologies to Noah – all in this boat together. We are part of a wondrous whole, Dadgie and I, the dog, the stink bug, the coffee table, and the trees in the back yard. We live together in a kind of covenant. It’s an ancient covenant, a unifying and equalizing promise – a daily and hourly blessing. May we honor it not just these forty days, but all our days.
1 Joseph Campbell, The Power of Myth, Apostrophe S Productions, 1998.
2 Op cit. p. 48.
A few weeks ago, I mentioned in a sermon that I had entered seminary after a dramatic experience of calling into the ministry. I believe I may have told some of you the story of that experience, but I hope that those of you who have heard it will forgive me for telling it once again, because it bears repeating. Our gospel reading this morning is about a dramatic experience that occurred at the top of a mountain, and this is my own “mountaintop experience.”
It all occurred the better part of 50 years ago when I was a police officer in Aurora, Colorado, a suburb of Denver. I was out on patrol in my cruiser one night – it must have been about 3:00 in the morning. As I rounded a corner, it happened without warning. I heard (or felt) something like a voice. It wasn’t really a voice – I think the ancient Hebrews called it a “shadow of a voice” – it was simply a clear and certain knowledge as though someone were in the back seat of the patrol car whispering in my ear. I simply knew that something was going on at a junior high school in my area. And I was absolutely certain that this was some sort of Divine message. If that sounds strange to you, imagine how strange it made me feel. It made absolutely no sense whatsoever. But there was also no question in my mind. I simply switched on my red lights (back then, police cars had red lights, not blue lights), pushed the gas pedal to the floor, and headed for the junior high. When I got there, I started checking the building. As a got to the back of the school, I discovered a door that had been kicked in. I called for back-up, and waited. When the other officers arrived, we entered the building and started the search. Every room we went through had been trashed: things broken, waste baskets overturned, graffiti scribbled on the walls, chairs thrown around. But at one point, the vandalism seemed to stop right in the middle of a room. It appeared the vandals had been scared away. I concluded that they had seen my red lights through the windows as I approached and took off out the back, which would mean that they were there breaking things up at the time that I heard that “shadow of a voice.” Indeed, we found sets of tracks in the snow leading away from the back door and across the school yard. We followed them as far as we could, but finally lost them at the sidewalks and streets.
I don’t mind telling you that I was pretty shaken by all this. It made no sense. If I had, indeed, received a message from the almighty Lord of this universe, why in the world would that Majestic Power care about a couple of kids vandalizing a school building in the middle of the night? I went to a friend of mine on the force at shift change; he was one of those we referred to at the time as “Jesus freaks.” I figured if anyone could explain all this, maybe he could. I told him the whole story, and said, “I don’t understand any of this.” His answer was telling. He said, “You don’t understand now, but someday you will.”
Well, someday came about six months later. I was sitting in my living room in a deep reflective mood, trying to sort out my life. Suddenly, I heard – or felt – the same “shadow of a voice,” and I knew that I was supposed to enter the ministry. If you had asked me five minutes earlier to list all of the things I would never do as long as I lived, ministry would have been at the top of that list. But in that moment I knew. I made arrangements, left the force, and took off for seminary as soon as I was able.
I don’t know if that episode at the junior high school might have had to do with stopping something from happening that turned out to be more important than we’ll ever know, but I like to think that it served as a kind of litmus test for me. It was a way of letting me know that when I heard that shadow of a voice, I would know it could be trusted and was something to heed.
Nothing like that had ever happened to me up to that time, and nothing like it has happened since. But whenever I start to lose my way, whenever I get discouraged or doubtful, whenever I begin to fall into deadly routines or chronic weariness, I think back on that experience. I remember that it did, indeed, happen to me, and I once again see my life from the perspective of that high moment.
I think that’s what Mark is recording here in the ninth chapter of this gospel. It was a mystical experience at the top of a mountain in which they perceived Jesus to be transfigured before their very eyes. It’s the instant in which their hunches and beliefs and hopes about Jesus, and about his divine calling were confirmed. It’s the high moment to which the frightened and discouraged architects and builders of the early church could look back, and from which they could see their lives and efforts from a better perspective. And I believe that’s why they recorded it and left it to us, as a reminder to trust our “mountaintop experiences.”
We all have them. Not everyone’s is quite so dramatic as mine, I acknowledge. I feel extraordinarily fortunate to have had such an hour of grace. But every one of us has high moments in life – times when the heavy veil of uncertainty is lifted, and the way seems clear. Many of you have had times of discovery, when you realize that Christ is inviting you to take up the journey and you have said, “yes.” For some of you, it may have happened on a retreat, or at summer camp, or in the midst of a service of worship. And who among us has not seen a sunset, or heard a piece of music, or encountered a written word that seems to leap into our experience like an intruder, and inexplicably open up a new way of seeing, a sense of hope and possibility? If we could pause for a moment right now, I’m sure everyone here could fix in your mind some treasured memory of such a lofty moment.
There are, most certainly, many valleys and dark places in life, but each and every one of you knows, and can recall, times on the mountain of transfiguration, instances of high vision and transforming power.
It happened to John Bunyan. Bunyan was a devout Baptist minister whose life was full of many dark and dreadful valleys. He was born in England in November, 1628, the son of a tinker. He was an apprentice tinker and a soldier in the Parliamentary army. Around 1648 he experienced a religious conversion and became a separatist from the Church of England, eventually becoming one of the leaders of a congregation in Bedford. Bunyan became a popular preacher, speaking to large crowds. But in 1660, it was declared illegal to conduct worship services or preach except within the confines of the Church of England. Bunyan was not the kind of man to be pushed around by the state. So, he continued to preach from street corners. He was summarily arrested and sent to Bedford county jail for twelve years.
While in prison he began to write religious tracts and pamphlets and an autobiographical work, “Grace Abounding to the Chief of Sinners .” In this book, he tells us of his titanic struggles of the soul, and his many mountaintop experiences.
Bunyan considered himself to be greatest among all the sinners, and totally unworthy of salvation. But there were moments of grace. Such as the time he was playing a game called “cat,” and after hitting the ball he dropped his club, feeling the presence and voice of Christ calling him to pursue faithfulness, or the time he was in a shop and felt what seemed like a powerful wind that he experienced as the presence of the Spirit, or the time he was lying in bed next to his wife who was in the throes of some terrible pains, and he prayed that if her pains stopped he would know that God heard the “most secret thoughts of the heart,” and it happened immediately. These and other experiences had a profound impact on him.
Upon his release from prison, he returned to preaching on the street corner. In 1675 Bunyan was imprisoned again, and during that time he wrote a book called, “The Pilgrim’s Progress from This World to That Which Is to Come, a prose allegory of the pilgrimage of a soul in search of salvation.” Ten editions of Pilgrim’s Progress were printed during Bunyan’s lifetime. It eventually became the most widely read book in English except for the Bible.
One telling passage in Pilgrim’s Progress is the moment of questioning, when Christian is almost convinced by Atheist that there is no such thing as the Celestial City which they seek. But Christian’s companion, Hope, recalls the shepherd taking them up the hill called “Clear” where they had caught a glimpse of the city at a distance. He says to Christian, “What! no Mount Zion? Did we not see, from the Delectable Mountains the gate of the city?”
In that moment, one can almost feel the years of loneliness in Bunyan’s jail cell, the anguish of his times of spiritual torment, and the doubts that haunted him in his dreariest days. And you can hear his triumphant recollection of his own mountaintop experiences: “Did we not see it with our own eyes?”
My message to you today is this: trust your high moments. Cherish and nurture those times of clear vision, those peaks of human experience in which transience becomes transcendence, and the divine is revealed. When you are living in a time of darkness, remember the light. When you are enduring the winter of despair, remember the springtime of hope. When you are suffering the consequences of irresponsible human arrogance and folly in the marketplace and the halls of government, remember the vision that has been set before us – the vision of a people under God fulfilling a dream of liberty and justice for all people.
And, like those early Christians who recalled the transfiguration of Jesus on the mountain, take hold of those high moments of clear vision and trust them. Let your heart and your feet be guided by the dependable vision that you have touched on a starry night in the back yard, in a circle of loving friends, or other times of holiness. Remember Bunyan’s words of Hope: “Did we not see, from the . . . Mountains the gate of the city?”
The day after tomorrow will be the twenty first anniversary of my mother’s death. It has put me in a reflective mood and I want to take some time this morning to share a very treasured story and memory from the time of her dying. My wife, Dadgie, wasn’t able to go, so I flew down alone as our family gathered in Arkansas for my mother’s final days. We were all there together when she breathed her last. It was an intimate and sacred moment that none of us will ever forget. We sang, and prayed, and read scripture, and cried and laughed, and shared in a wondrous sense of release when it was over. It had been coming a long time, and it was truly a blessing.
That was all on Thursday evening. She died at about twenty minutes after seven. It was then that things started to get a little strange. I want to tell you the story of how I managed to become a basket case in a matter of three or four hours, and how my 38 year old nephew became a pastor to me.
It all started when we got back to my father’s house and I phoned my son, Eric, in Colorado, to begin letting my children know that the end had finally come for their grandmother. As soon as I told Eric the news, he informed me that he and his brother, Drake, and sister, Nichole, had already been talking to each other about coming out to Arkansas to be with me. I thanked him much for the thought, but obviously it was not feasible at that point because we were going to have a memorial service the very next day (Friday), and I would be leaving to return home on Saturday morning. He made it clear to me, that feasible or not, they had already decided to make the trip – to drive from Denver, Colorado to northwest Arkansas to be with me and the rest of the family. I then explained that we had just had a snow and ice storm there and the roads were treacherous, and that my father had been in touch with his brother in Kansas who said that it was the same there. It was not only unrealistic to try to drive about a thousand miles in sixteen or seventeen hours, just to turn around and drive home again, but that it was unsafe on those roads. He thanked me for my advice, as grown children do, and informed me that they would see me on Friday afternoon. That’s when my worry set in, and my nerves started to unravel.
Those nerve endings frayed even more when, the next morning, I received a cell phone call from my son, Drake, on the road. They were running behind schedule and didn’t expect to be there until about 7:00 PM on Friday, the same time we had scheduled the memorial service for. He said they were just entering Texas. I said, “Texas? Why would you be going through Texas?” He said, “Well, it’s just the northern tip of Texas.” I decided not to press the issue, because there was nothing to do about it at that point, but I knew they would have had a much shorter trip coming the northern route through Kansas.
My family had asked me to conduct the memorial service for mother, and I was happy to oblige. I spent the afternoon on Friday preparing for the service. As the time drew closer and we hadn’t heard from my children, I began to get more anxious. Then came the cell phone call. They were approaching Fort Smith, still an hour and a half to two hours away. Eric said, “I don’t think we’re going to make it, we’re not going to get to Little Rock until maybe nine o’clock. I said, “Little Rock!? Why would you be headed to Little Rock? We are nowhere near Little Rock!” He said, “Well, it is in Arkansas, isn’t it?” That’s when it dawned on me that he had no idea where he was going. He then informed me that their cell phone battery was running low and they didn’t know how much longer it would last. We started to give them directions to get there, but their phone died, and we lost them before we could finish.
The family huddled and started trying to think of contingency plans. Several members of the family favored delaying the memorial service until they could get there. I was starting to lose it, though, and I said I thought it would be unfair to the people coming from the community to ask them to wait indefinitely for the service to start. At the same time, I couldn’t imagine those kids driving what was going to amount to about twenty hours across country just to miss the service. Mostly, I kept imagining them driving all over northwest Arkansas all night unable to find us, and finally running out of gas in the middle of nowhere on a freezing winter night.
By now, I was coming unglued. I threw my jacket down on a chair and headed for the kitchen to try to find a way to get my wits about me. What would happen to my children? Why did they take off on this insane trip to begin with? Would they get there for the service? Would they get there at all? How in the world was I going to conduct a memorial service for my mother under these circumstances? I could barely think straight.
That’s when it happened. My nephew, the pharmacist, walked into the kitchen behind me. He had decided in a quick instant that it was time to change our relationship. He stopped in front of me as I turned around and looked straight into my eyes. He was taking the personal risk of extending himself and relating to me in a way he had never done before. I knew what that gentle peace in his steady gaze meant, because I knew how devout a Christian he was. As he held my attention with his eyes, he said quietly, “Uncle Mike, it’s going to be alright. They’re going to be alright. It will turn out fine.” I knew that for him, this was not an idle hope. It was a declaration of absolute confidence, grounded in his faith. Being a person of faith doesn’t mean that, indeed everything will turn out fine, but it was clear that he loved me, he wanted to help me, and he cared about me. And that confident faith of his washed over me like a healing balm. I put my arms around him and said, “Thank you.” And I was in awe of this young pharmacist from California whose diapers I used to change, and who had suddenly become my pastor.
[By the way, for the record, it all did turn out beautifully. We held up the service until my children arrived. It was a deeply meaningful time, and it touched the heart of their father more than they could know that my children made that unbelievable trip.]
Paul said, “I have become all things to all people.” “To the Jews I became as a Jew. . . . To those under the law I became as one under the law . . . . To those outside the law I became as one outside the law . . . . To the weak I became weak . . .” and I would add on behalf of my nephew, Scott, “To one who is a pastor, I became as a pastor.”
I don’t know how easy it was for my nephew to do what he did, but I rather suspect that it was not at all easy for Paul to do what he did. Paul was, in my estimation, a passionate, single-minded man. I don’t think it was in his nature to “become all things to all people.” To be so open and so flexible strikes me as contrary to the man’s psychological make-up. But he says, “I do it all for the sake of the gospel . . .” He stretches himself to the point of doing almost anything for the sake of the gospel.
Would we? You and I are not inclined to go beyond our “safety zones” for the sake of most anything. When an opportunity presents itself to stick our necks out, to move beyond the familiar patterns of a relationship, and say something to a friend or a stranger who might need a word of support, when a situation arises in which we might be able to share a bit of our faith with another human being, when the moment of truth comes and we could make a difference for someone by getting beyond our limitations and fears, do we seize it, or do we tend to withdraw to an anonymous place of safety?
My late father once related to me the story of a man who attended his church in Rogers Park on the north side of Chicago about fifty-five years ago now. The man was coming home from work one day on the “el” (Chicago’s elevated commuter train). He got off at the Roger’s Park station, and headed for the stairs. But at the top, he slipped and fell all the way down that long steep stairway to the sidewalk. He found himself lying on the concrete, bruised and battered, and barely able to move. He later told my father that no one stopped or spoke to him except one woman. She came up to him and offered him a religious tract; “Are you saved?” it said. I was amazed to hear that story. Not a soul on that street, I thought, could take a chance and reach out to this injured man – not a soul. If you or I were there, we would certainly stop and help, right? Or would we find it more emotionally convenient to assume the guy lying there is simply a drunk passed out on the curb, someone to not “get involved” with?
Paul says that getting outside of himself and meeting people where they are is not an option, it’s a “necessity.” “Woe to me,” he writes, “if I do not proclaim the gospel.” And “proclaiming the gospel” does not mean simply asking someone if he’s found Jesus or sticking a tract in his hand; it means taking the risk to discover that person’s need and responding to it. We, like Paul, are not simply encouraged to extend ourselves for the sake of the gospel, we are absolutely compelled to do so. We are compelled to do so, because there is no other way to live the gospel; there’s no other way to follow the footsteps of Christ.
But, like the lady with the tract on the streets of Chicago, it’s very easy for us to fool ourselves into thinking we are proclaiming the message of Christ when all we’re doing is offering lip service. So how are we to know the difference? How are we to know when what we are giving voice to is the will and way of Christ, and when it is simply our own narrow agenda?
Well, the truth is, sometimes it’s hard to tell. But here’s a clue: if we find that what we are doing is very comfortable and easy, we just may be getting off track. We likely need to get outside our comfort zones and take some risks if we are going to truly understand others, truly relate, truly empathize, and meet them where they are.
But the rewards, as Paul suggests, can be high. To live the gospel, to embody Christ to another, to participate in another’s experience and thereby help to heal them is to, as Paul said, “share in [the gospel’s] blessings.” It is to know that there is truly power in life; it is to know that love conquers all; it is to discover the wondrous gift that is given to those who reach for it: a computer programmer can be a healer, a pipe fitter can be a prophet, a pharmacist can be a pastor.
Praise the Lord. Hallelujah.
First, a confession. My sermon title is stolen. But that’s OK, because the guy I filched it from stole it first. You may recognize it as part of the famous line by Dr. Martin Luther King, Jr. (a line he used, by the way, in three different speeches and a sermon). Dr. King said, “The arc of the moral universe is long, but it bends towards justice.” He is regularly credited with those words, but he stole them from a nineteenth century Universalist preacher named Theodore Parker. Don’t let all of this upset you. We preachers are famous for being literary thieves. A seminary professor of ours used to say that any preacher only has one original idea at most, and only three sermons (everything else amounts to variations on themes).
Anyway, this brings us to the question of why there is a photo of Theodore Parker on the cover of your bulletin this morning. It’s because I wanted to introduce you to this remarkable man who was ahead of his time in so many ways, and because some of what he had to say bears directly on our scripture readings today – and might just change your life, as it has mine. Theodore Parker was an outspoken, theologically radical, Unitarian pastor and leading abolitionist in the mid-eighteen hundreds. His grandfather, John Parker, by the way, was Captain of the Lexington militia at the Battle of Lexington in 1775. Parker’s rhetorical brilliance was plundered not only by Martin Luther King, Jr., but by Abraham Lincoln. Lincoln’s famous line in the Gettysburg address, “of the people, by the people, and for the people,” was lifted right out of a speech by Parker thirteen years earlier titled “The American Idea.”
Over the years of his ministry, Parker became so radical in his theology that he was too much even for the Unitarians to bear. He pretty much rejected the Bible, and counseled people to base their faith on personal experience instead. More and more he became a social activist and provided not only some kindling, but the lighter fluid and matches for the abolitionist movement in Boston. He started an independent Congregational Society and filled the pews with the likes of Louisa May Alcott, William Lloyd Garrison, Julia Ward Howe, and Elizabeth Cady Stanton. That congregation came to number in the thousands. He never lived to see either the horrific tragedy or the glorious triumph of his cause, however. He died less than a year before the outbreak of the Civil War.
So, why do I share all this biography with you? It all comes back to this phrase of his that Dr. King pilfered. It comes from a remarkable sermon that Parker delivered in 1852 titled “Of Justice and Conscience.” I’ve read it, and I must tell you, it took me a while. In those days, sermons went on for one or two hours. He begins his treatise with a survey of the physical sciences (and does so, by the way, with language that presages some of the discoveries of quantum physics that were about seventy years from being formulated). He then says that, just as there are physical forces that hold the material world together, there is a force that holds the moral world together; that force is justice. His argument is that justice is not a choice that we can make or let be; it is an elemental principle of human existence that cannot be undone any more than we can dismiss with gravity. Making his case he writes, “Look at the facts of the world. You see a continual and progressive triumph of the right. I do not pretend to understand the moral universe, the arc is a long one, my eye reaches but little ways. I cannot calculate the curve and complete the figure by the experience of sight; I can divine it by conscience. And from what I see I am sure it bends towards justice.”1 Dr. King expressed this confidence in the irrepressible power of justice with these words: “. . . let us remember that there is a creative force in this universe, working to pull down the gigantic mountains of evil, a power that is able to make a way out of no way and transform dark yesterdays into bright tomorrows.”2
This idea, that justice is an indispensable element of the created order and the arc of its direction is built into the structure of things, is actually a very old one. We heard a remarkable reflection of that principle in our reading from Deuteronomy this morning. By the way, sometimes I don’t understand the lectionary people. In the given pericope for today they left out the best – and most important – part of the passage. I fixed that by including verses twenty one and twenty two. Those two verses deal with the question that jumps immediately to our minds when we hear these ancient penalties for false prophecy. The biblical writer says, “You may say to yourself, ‘How can we recognize a word that the Lord has not spoken?’ If a prophet speaks in the name of the Lord but the thing does not take place or prove true, it is a word that the Lord has not spoken. The prophet has spoken it presumptuously; do not be frightened by it.” This is pretty neat, really. The role of the prophet in ancient Israel was to speak the disturbing word of justice to the principalities and powers. And these verses are telling us that you have to wait to see how things come out – no matter how long it takes – the words of a true prophet will inevitably come true. The point beneath the point is that, well, “the arc of the moral universe is long, but it bends towards justice.”
You and I see evil on the throne in so many places around our world. Theodore Parker saw it too; the scourge of slavery was not bending to the will of his band of abolitionist followers. But tyrants fall, evil is ultimately exposed for what it is, and the sands of time wear down and blow away the pride of those who devote themselves only to greed, destruction, and violence. This truth gives us something to hold onto in those hours of dread when it seems that the darkness is overtaking the light.
But this law of abiding justice is not only for the great arc of history, it is the glue that holds our own hearts together. Parker put it this way: “. . . I learn justice, the law of right, the divine rule of conduct for human life; I see it, not as an external fact . . . but I see it as a mode of action which belongs to the infinitely perfect nature of God; belongs also to my own nature, and so is not barely over me, but in me, of me, and for me. . . . I find a deep, permanent, and instinctive delight in justice, not only in the outward effects, but in the inward cause, and by my nature I love this law of right, this rule of conduct, this justice, with a deep and abiding love. I find that justice is the object of my conscience. . . . Finding it fits me thus, I know that justice will work my welfare and that of all [humankind].”3 Here’s how I would make Parker’s point: a love of justice and the longer perspective that one acquires by knowing its law, alters one’s own moral bearings.
And this takes us to our second reading for this morning from the gospel of Mark. It’s a tale about casting out demons. But I’m not going to focus on demonic possession (although you and I are certainly subject to our own demons at times). My interest here is in the statement at the very beginning of the passage in which it notes that Jesus was doing this healing on the Sabbath. This is exactly the sort of thing that got him in hot water so often. Later on in the gospel Jesus heals a man with a withered hand on the Sabbath and Mark says because of it, “The Pharisees went out and immediately conspired with the Herodians against him, how to destroy him.”4 But Jesus’s argument was that the law of love (or, one might say, the law of justice) supersedes all other laws. If there is a question about what course of action to obey, if there is a conflict with one moral principle as against another, the law of love – the law of justice – wins. Period.
Theodore Parker put it this way: “Viewed as an object not in man, justice is the constitution or fundamental law of the moral universe, the law of right, a rule of conduct for man in all his moral relations. Accordingly all human affairs must be subject to that as the law paramount; what is right agrees therewith and stands, what is wrong conflicts and falls. Private cohesions of self-love, of friendship, or of patriotism, must all be subordinate to this universal gravitation towards the eternal right.”5
Parker saw this at work even as those in power struggled against the eternal and irrepressible force of justice. He wrote: “Hitherto, the actual function of government, so far as it has been controlled by the will of the rulers, has commonly been this: To foster the strong at the expense of the weak, to protect the capitalist and tax the laborer. The powerful have sought a monopoly of development and enjoyment, loving to eat their morsel alone. Accordingly, little respect is paid to absolute justice by the controlling statesmen of the Christian world. Not conscience and the right is appealed to, but prudence and the expedient for to-day. Justice is forgotten in looking at interest, and political morality neglected for political economy. . .”6
He was a man ahead of his time, and his words not only inspired Louisa May Alcott, William Lloyd Garrison, Julia Ward Howe, Elizabeth Cady Stanton, Abraham Lincoln, and Martin Luther King, Jr., they touch our hearts, and remind us that the course of history, like the topography of our own lives, is littered with the remains of poor decisions, greed and self-interest, foolish notions, and even, for some, senseless violence, but that those have not the final word, for us or for humankind. This principle is made manifest in my own life experience. I was rebooting my laptop the other day and across the screen it said, “Upgrading your system firmware. Do not power down your system.” It struck me that looking back at all the foolish, embarrassing things I’ve said and done in my life I’d like to “upgrade my system firmware” instead of “powering down.” And Parker’s words remind us that that is an ever-present possibility, that there is a law that holds both our hearts and our moral universe together, and to which all other laws must yield. You might remember it as a principle for your own life with a familiar mnemonic device: WWJD, What Will Justice Demand?.
I leave you, of course, with the words of Theodore Parker: “As an eagle stirreth up her nest, from her own beak to feed its young, broods over their callow frame, and bears them on her wings, teaching them first to fly, so comes justice unto men.”
1 Theodore Parker, The Collected Works of Theodore Parker: Sermons. Prayers, p. 48. See: http://books.google.com/books?id=_VRGAAAAMAAJ&dq=theodore%20parker’s%20life%20and%20writings&pg=PP5#v=onepage&q&f=false.
2 Martin Luther King, Jr., Where Do We Go From Here?, Speech delivered at the 11th Annual SCLC Convention,
Atlanta, Ga., August 16, 1967.
3 Op cit.
4 See Mark 3:1-6.
5 Op cit.
6 Op ct.
You may be wondering why we are reading three passages from today’s lectionary and what in the world I see as a connection among these three passages. I think I’ll keep you guessing for a little while. I’d like to begin by taking each one of them in turn and unpacking them for you.
We begin with the story of Jonah. The passage you heard this morning is actually a little deceptive because it’s lifted out of context. I’m sure all of you have heard of “Jonah and the whale.” That story is also widely misunderstood because it too gets lifted out of context. In order to understand what’s going on with this ancient legend, you really have to stick all these parts together and get the whole picture of what is a quite fanciful yarn. In essence, so the tale goes, Jonah was called by God to go to Nineveh and cry out that the city will be severely punished by God for their wickedness. Jonah instead runs away. He books passage on a ship going the opposite direction. But God sends a terrible storm that threatens to sink them all. To save the crew, Jonah tells them to throw him overboard and God will quiet the seas. So they throw him over, down he goes, and God sends a whale to swallow him. He spends three days and nights in the belly of the whale (I told you this was a fanciful yarn). The whale spits him out on dry land, and Jonah relents and goes to Nineveh, crying out to the residents God’s message of doom and destruction. The people of the city hear and respond by fasting and wearing sackcloth as an act of contrition. This pleases God who then chooses to spare the city (that’s the part you heard this morning). Jonah then gets angry and depressed because God has forgiven the people of Nineveh as Jonah figured he would, and he goes outside of town to sit and pout. But God makes it clear to him that compassion for these Assyrians in Nineveh is part of the divine program and Jonah had best get on board.
So what’s going on here? What we are dealing with is an ancient Hebrew parable – much like the parables Jesus told. Most biblical scholars believe this story was written after the exile of the people of Israel in Babylon, and it’s addressed to the Israelites who were bitterly angry after their treatment at the hands of the Babylonians, and even more so, the Assyrians, the people for whom Nineveh was a major city, and who invaded Israel and ravaged cities time and again for generations. Jonah is a comical character, who just keeps making a fool of himself as he is driven to silly extremes by his hatred of the Assyrians in Nineveh. The parable is told, in much the same way Jesus did, to suck in the listeners with an engaging little story and then whomp them upside the head with the deeper message. In this case the message to the Israelites is: get over your seething rage at the Assyrians. It’s time to forgive and move on. In short, get a life!
Next, let’s take look at this reading from First Corinthians. This is the apostle Paul writing to the church at Corinth. It is also a passage that cries out to be understood in the context of the whole letter. The Corinthian Church was, like churches some of us have been familiar with today, in deep trouble. It was on the verge of splitting up into rival congregations. Some were followers of Paul, some of Apollos, and some of Cephas. In addition, there were those who were overly strict moralists who believed that marriage itself was to be rejected by the truly faithful as a lure away from ascetic purity, and on the other hand, those who believed in unrestricted sexual license (the notion behind the phrase, “All things are lawful”). Into this hotbed of hostility, Paul sends this letter. And in it, he tries to identify to some degree with all sides, and with none. He calls for unity, and says neither he, Apollos, nor Cephas should be the object of Christians’ allegiance, but Christ. He agrees that “all things are lawful” but says that “not all things are beneficial [or] . . . build up.” And then we come to today’s reading in which he sides, to a degree, with those on the opposite side of the fence. He says, “let even those who have wives be as though they had none,” echoing something of his other statements about his own preference to not marry. So Paul is urging the Corinthians to find unity because that is the way of Christ. And in our passage he is trying to scare the bejeebers out of them to get them to shape up. He says that the time is short, and “the present form of this world is passing away.” In other words, the world is coming to an end any day now, and there are more important matters at hand than bickering over allegiances, theology, or even morality. The fact that he was wrong about the rapidly approaching end of the world is perhaps not as significant as the truth that he was calling upon the Corinthians to wake up to.
Which brings us the third reading from the Gospel of Mark. Here we find Jesus beginning his ministry by walking around finding guys hard at work as fishermen and calling to them to drop their nets and follow him. The amazing part of the story is that, indeed, that’s exactly what they do. Though, reading a little deeper into the narrative, it may not be quite as amazing as it seems. It appears that Jesus must have developed something of a reputation by this time as a very learned Rabbi, and it also seems that these four fishermen already knew Jesus. Still, it’s pretty remarkable that they were ready to become his disciples in an instant, without a moment’s hesitation. I’m reminded of the wonderful scene in the TV series The West Wing when Josh seeks out his high-priced lawyer friend Sam to join the speech writing staff of Governor Bartlett who is running for the Presidency. All it takes is a look from Josh through the meeting room door window at Sam, and he gets up from his chair in an important meeting to walk out the door. When they ask him in astonishment where he’s going, he replies, “New Hampshire.” I think this episode with Jesus and the fishermen must have been something like that. He called, and they dropped everything and followed.
So, now I’m ready to answer your query about what in the world these three stories have to do with each other. We have a parable about a guy who was called by God in a dramatic fashion to a mission that was totally abhorrent to him, and he tried every way he could to run away from it but ultimately had to do it in spite of himself. It is a story addressed to people who were being called to completely change their course in life, even though they would initially find the idea revolting. And it is the story of a city full of people who heard a prophetic message and found their hearts changed.
We also have a letter to a church filled with people who were about to blow the place to smithereens and were being called to a new and higher life of unity. The approach was to shift their perspective by scaring them into changing their minds.
And we have a great rabbi who has built relationships and demonstrated his powers, and who calls four fishermen to change their careers and become disciples of his ministry, proclaiming good news to those who were ready to listen. He told them he would make them into fishers of people instead of fish, calling still others to respond and take up the journey of faith.
These are all stories about different kinds of people receiving a divine summons by different means, in differing circumstances, and responding in divergent ways, but all being drawn to a new life and a new mission.
When Dadgie and I were in seminary we had a brilliant professor and mentor by the name of Jim Ashbrook (I’ve spoken of him before, I’m sure). Jim once summed up the amazing diversity of callings and responses, of people and circumstances, with the phrase: “There are many gates into the holy city.” From our study of ancient Jerusalem we learned that there was the Damascus Gate, the Sheep’s Gate, the Beautiful Gate of the Temple, and others – all different configurations and sizes. So, we knew his meaning: there is more than one way to find the treasure of divine purpose and meaning in life; this is so because there are many people coming from many different directions. This is a message that it took me some time to internalize. When I first entered seminary, I had come from a very dramatic experience of calling into the ministry. It made me something of a “Jesus freak”, as the old expression went. I felt that anyone who had a genuine calling must have had a similar experience to mine. It was only in time that I learned how many different gates there indeed are. I found that some folks had been reading a book and suddenly a light went on and everything made sense to them. Others had been brought up in the church and simply moved inexorably toward a deeper faith and a role in ministry. Still others came out of a history of doubting and questioning everything, and brought all those doubts and questions with them as they took up the path of faith.
This morning we sit here among friends. They each also come to us through different gates. And this we celebrate and affirm. In our church diverse beliefs, experiences, and approaches are not a cause for shame, they are a cause for rejoicing! They are a reflection of this beautiful, kaleidoscopic world that we have been placed in. This is given expression in one of the most sacred principles of the Free Church tradition; it is a doctrine we call “soul freedom”. We cherish this freedom of each individual soul among us to work out his or her faith in fear and trembling with no other member, no church potentate, not even a pastor, having the authority to dictate what that person must believe or profess. We believe that it is in such an environment of freedom that each of us has the best opportunity to learn, and grow, and find one’s way on this journey we call faith. All of this, by the way, is why we take votes at church meetings like we will be doing next Sunday, instead of having decisions handed down from the lofty throne of the pastor (in what I like to refer to as “the good old days”).
But, seriously, the recognition of the many gates goes even further than all this. We not only acknowledge that each of us comes to the journey by different means, we affirm that people all over this world come by different paths and through different gates. So we shun the hubris of claiming that our brand of religion is the “true path” and we refuse to condemn those who find faith through other Christian denominations, and even other religions.
What do our three stories have in common? Not a common experience of calling, but the fact that, out of divergent places, differing circumstances, and varied emphases, each of these were about people who responded, who at times even against their own desires or self-interest, ultimately said, “Yes” to that which was calling them to be more than they were. May you and I, entering through the many gates, keep finding ways to say, “Yes.”
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